Should we allocate more COVID-19 vaccine doses to non-vaccinated individuals?
Name
journal.pgph.0000498.pdf
Size
1.23 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f191cbe0f6b9dce50e3765a2f4ba9432
Author(s)
Ben Chaouch, Zied
Lo, Andrew W.
Wong, Chi Heem
Date Issued
July 1, 2022
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Citation
Ben Chaouch, Zied, Lo, Andrew W. and Wong, Chi Heem. 2022. "Should we allocate more COVID-19 vaccine doses to non-vaccinated individuals?." 2 (7).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Following the approval by the FDA of two COVID-19 vaccines, which are administered in two doses three to four weeks apart, we simulate the effects of various vaccine distribution policies on the cumulative number of infections and deaths in the United States in the presence of shocks to the supply of vaccines. Our forecasts suggest that allocating more than 50% of available doses to individuals who have not received their first dose can significantly increase the number of lives saved and significantly reduce the number of COVID-19 infections. We find that a 50% allocation saves on average 33% more lives, and prevents on average 32% more infections relative to a policy that guarantees a second dose within the recommended time frame to all individuals who have already received their first dose. In fact, in the presence of supply shocks, we find that the former policy would save on average 8, 793 lives and prevents on average 607, 100 infections while the latter policy would save on average 6, 609 lives and prevents on average 460, 743 infections.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management. Laboratory for Financial Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000498
